THE PAST SEASON.
IT is all over. Vanity Fair has taken to itself wings, and fled away from the sober and serious city where it holds its annual carnival. Only yesterday it seems that it was among us, with its follies, its feasting and its dancing, its music and its mumming ; and now the tents are struck, the booths are closed, the curtain has descended upon tragedy or comedy, and the players have washed the paint from their faces, and departed into private life ; all, all are gone, some to recover their wasted strength, others to follow still their eager pursuit of pleasure elsewhere, scattered to the four winds of heaven. London is empty, which means that the thousands have deserted her, and only the unconsidered millions remain. Now that the turmoil is over, and the hurly-burly done, one may reflect upon it all at one's leisure, and count the loss and the gain, though what loss or gain should there be to count ? The loss of many disappointed hopes, perhaps ; of a few earthenware vessels that would sail with those of brass, and were dismally cracked and swamped ; of a good deal of time and trouble, and some temper too,—nothing of the greatest consequence. And as to the gains, those of a few tradesmen who have disposed profitably of their goods, or of some anxious mothers who have been relieved of their marriageable daughters. Every year, society condemns itself to three months' hard labour, and, having served its time, it departs in peace. The labour is not particularly profitable, nor is it in the least harmful to the community at large : it makes up what we are pleased to call "the Season," and now the season is over.
Compared with other seasons that have gone before, it hardly differs from them at all : we dearly love the beaten track of pleasures, and but very rarely stray out of it in search of fresh amusement. Ascot and Henley have received the usual crowds; the Eton and Harrow and Oxford and Cam- bridge matches attracted the same amount of attention. It rained on all those occasions, but that too was not unusual. The four-in-hand coach is still an object of our admiration; and the drive to Hurlingham through the inclement weather is still supposed to be pleasant. This, at any rate, may be said of the last season, that it is quite the wettest and the coldest that we have endured for many a year; and yet, notwith- standing the drawback of the weather, it is said generally to have been a very brilliant one. In one respect at least it has been brilliant, for rarely have we ever had so good an opera, or one so well supported. The casts have been so uniformly good, that it would. be an un- grateful task to remember any one singer more than another, except in the case of the De Reszkes, who so incom- parably tower above them all, or perhaps in that of Miss Macintyre, who may one day prove that England too can produce a prima donna for the admiration of the world. There have been the usual shows of pictures, upon which people have discoursed with or without understanding, according to their wont. Nor were the Exhibitions wanting,—a Military Ex- hibition that preached a far more eloquent sermon about the horrors of war than ever did the Universal Peace Association ; and a French Exhibition to keep up the tra- dition of its predecessors, the Italian, the Spanish, and the Wild West, with the usual display of coloured lights, switchback railways, and what are called variety enter-
tainments. There is an amusing little flavour of hypocrisy in the way in which we enjoy our own strange pleasures
under the pretence of studying the products of a foreign country. The theatres, too, have been well attended, though they have given us nothing that is very striking ; we have witnessed the heroic efforts of one of the greatest actresses of our time to contend against her failing powers and our own ungrateful indifference, and have been charmed into listening, while America taught us how to act Shakespeare's plays. But even in that there was nothing new, for we had long before begun to weary of Sarah Bernhardt, and had learnt last year to admire Miss Rehan. While of private • -entertainments—of balls, of concerts, of dinners, and garden- -parties—there has been no lack. Stern moralists relate • dreadful tales of the extravagance of some of these festivals, of the fabulous sums that have been spent in pro- viding flowers, and the sumptuousness of the dresses. It may be so, but the dresses were very pretty as a rule; and as to the flowers, if people have too much money, they may as well spend it in roses as in anything else. "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Very true, but all is vanity,—the preacher and his sermon too; most particularly vain is the sermon. Instead of inveighing against such vanities, we feel much more inclined to congratulate -ourselves that they are as harmless as they are. There has been, of course, a great deal of vulgar ostentation this year, but neither more nor less than before ; perhaps rather less, for at least we have been spared the disagreeable spectacle of all the rank and fashion of London crowding to the ball of a newly discovered millionaire, who was said to give valuable presents to his guests. There always have been, and there always will be, people who, figuratively speaking, persist in wearing their rings outside their gloves,—men whose dinners are better than their manners, and women whose diamonds are their most conspicuous quality ; the former will always find guests, and the latter will never fail to attract admirers. We may deplore the want of taste that is displayed both by such people and their friends ; but, after all, want of taste is not criminal. To some people, it would be little less than torture to be pilloried in what is known as a society journal, by name,—to have their person and their dress described at length, and their private house turned inside out, for the gratification of public curiosity. These people enjoy it. Such suffering is the penalty of the great ; and, in a spirit of noble sympathy, with the great they wish to suffer. Who shall blame them for their sacrifice of self ? Vanity of vani- ties? Well, there are vanities more ignoble yet than theirs.
What more has the season brought us ? A wasted Session, some people say. That is not so certain : at any rate, this is not the place to discuss the question, so we may content ourselves with remembering that at least we have improved the colours on the map of Africa, and learnt a great deal of geography. And that recalls the fact that the season has had its hero : the hero of a thousand hair-breadth escapes and most romantic adventures, who fought his way through innumer- able perils, and has been rewarded with feasting, the robe of honour, and a wife,—quite after the good old fashion of the fairy-tale. Here at least there has been a great improvement on last year, when we had nothing better than that very pinchbeck personage, General Boulanger, to wonder at and admire. It is good, indeed, to be reminded that the old dogged courage of the Englishman is not yet dead, and that we have yet among us men who can endure three years of continual hardship, and look upon death day after day with a steadfast face. Of late there has been a tendency to look at such matters from the point of view of the political martyr, to see courage in the audacity that defies a policeman, to measure suffering with the prison weighing-machine, and to consider a plank- bed outside the limit of human endurance. Not, of course, -that one would for a moment compare the exploits of an African explorer with those of an Irish politician ; with the latter, the disinterested nature of his purpose, and the ex- ceeding gentleness and politeness with which he seeks to accomplish it, amply atone for any want of manliness, of mere animal courage, that he may display.
But to revert to the amusements and pleasures of the season—the real business of those summer months—what desperately hard work that business entails ! People labour at their pleasures as if they depended on them for a liveli- hood,—they work so hard, that they have no time to enjoy themselves. Even three dances in one night do not appal the devotee of fashion who is determined to do everything and go everywhere. Woeful is the condition and the aspect of the chaperons,—very upright they sit, to encourage wakeful- ness, their faces grey with weariness and want of sleep ; the
spectacle of those poor elderly ladies stifling their yawns and straggling with a tendency to nod, is piteous in the extreme. They and their daughters chain themselves down in the galley of fashion, and toil at the oar with such untiring, uncomplaining energy as never galley-slave displayed. Vogue la galere ! Though back be weary and head may ache, they will toil on until they drop. And that is the characteristic of most of our pleasures and pursuits ; they are innocent and simple enough, but we take them too seriously. If we could only remember sometimes that we follow them for our own amusement and not from any sense of duty, there might be some hope of our deriving some enjoyment out of them as well. It is an admirable quality, that of doing a thing with all one's might; but one may still succeed in doing it mightily without considering it the most important thing in the world; and we are apt to look upon such amusements as cricket and lawn- tennis as professions without which the world would hardly get on at all. There is an amusing story told of a certain Mr. Jones, let us call him, who had greatly distinguished himself as a lawn-tennis player, and whose sister was asked what he did with himself and his life. "Why, he plays lawn- tennis," was the answer ; "he is the Jones, you know." The same uncompromising thoroughness is carried by society into their town as well as their country pursuit of pleasure, and they struggle gallantly on its monotonous course long after their appetite for it is satiated and jaded. Well, even the season comes to an end at last, and there is rest for its weary servants.
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